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When I go shopping for transhumanist enhancements, these items will be on the top of my list. As more futuristic innovations arrive, I’ll add additional enhancements.
“Tiger Woods won golf’s biggest tournament, The Masters, with the help of super-human eyesight. In 1999, he had laser eye surgery, which gave him 20/15 vision. After the surgery, he won seven of his next 10 events. Other top golfers who have upgraded their vision include England’s Lee Westood, Fiji’s Vijay Singh, Ireland’s Padraig Harrington and America’s Tom Kite.”
I wear glasses with, thankfully, a small correction today. Tomorrow, perhaps I’ll get an upgrade.
Back in 2005, Dr. Ellen Heber-Katz noticed that mice that had holes punched in their ears to make it easier to separate control- from non-control-group mice had regrown so quickly she and her staff could no longer tell the mice apart. Upon further investigation, they discovered that MRL mice, the kind that had regenerated their ear-punch injuries, could regenerate damage to any organ, apart from the brain.
Further investigation has led to the following finding:
“A quest that began over a decade ago with a chance observation has reached a milestone: the identification of a gene that may regulate regeneration in mammals. The absence of this single gene, called p21, confers a healing potential in mice long thought to have been lost through evolution and reserved for creatures like flatworms, sponges, and some species of salamander.”
It wouldn’t be as fast as the healing factor possessed by Wolverine, of the X-Men, but it would be a big improvement over what evolution has gifted me. It could also, however, complicate the installment of my next tech upgrade:
I mean, I have a couple of small tats, but they’re stationary. An LED tattoo could be animated, colorful, changeable, and come with an off setting (job interviews come to mind). They could even be installed with specific medical functions, such as monitoring vital signs, in mind. And it will run on whatever you’re having for dinner; its power source is a fuel cell. A blood vessel is routed over the cell, which then extracts blood sugar for its fuel needs. This isn’t, as of this writing, ready for the general public, but Brian Litt, at Litt labs at the University of Pennsylvania, who I’ve spoken with via e-mail a few times, is working on that. I’m not sure whether turning of my p21 gene would leave my LED tattoo alone, convince my body to try to heal my LED tattoo by pushing it out, or, possibly, to grow around it — something Kevin Warwick experienced with his own cyborg implants.
“There are lots of genes we’d like to inhibit. One exciting example is the fat insulin receptor gene, which basically says ‘hold on to every calorie, because the next hunting season may not work out so well.’ You have to remember that our genes evolved tens of thousands of years ago, when conditions were very different than they are today. There wasn’t any evolutionary reason for people to live very long, because once you were done with child rearing, which was generally maybe age thirty, you were using up the limited resources of the clan. And so longevity was not selected for. But there were genes that were appropriate for the time, like holding on to every calorie, because calories were few and far between — unlike today, with our super-sized meals. Now when scientists inhibited that gene in mice, those mice ate ravenously and remained slim — and they got the health benefits of being slim. They didn’t get diabetes; they didn’t get heart disease; they lived twenty percent longer. A number of pharmaceutical companies took notice and are now pursuing inhibiting the fat insulin receptor gene in fat cells, which would be quite a blockbuster concept. And that’s just one of our twenty-three thousand genes.”
As Stephen Hawking says, we are entering a stage of self-directed evolution. Tech and genetic upgrades are already here, expanding our options for modifying body, abilities, and experiences.
Yes, I mos def do want more information about the world around me. I remember going to the library and trolling through the card catalogue in the hopes of scraping together enough information for a high-school English paper. Today, information is at my fingertips via the Net, Google, and other means; my phone is no longer of the cord-tethered nature, meaning I can communicate from pretty much anywhere, and I have conversations with friends I have not actually seen in 20 or so years via Facebook. My calendar is online, as are my contact data. I can act in a much more informed manner, much more quickly than I ever could back in the card-catalogue days.
Load me up with new knowledge!
Aaaaannd another external addition to round out this first edition of the list:
“The STAR 1200 Augmented Reality System uses a patented quantum optic see-thru technology that enables you to see the real world directly through and around its transparent widescreen video displays. Computer content, such as text, images and video, are overlaid on the displays in full color 2D or stunning 3D.”
And only $4999!
I’d take something else like this, but loaded with augmented reality overlays of information, graphics, etc. If they make it connectable to the ‘Net, I am soooo there.
Jønathan Lyons is a transhumanist parent, an essayist, and an author of experimental fiction both long and short. He lives in central Pennsylvania and teaches at Bucknell University. His fiction publications include Signal to Noise: A Novel Infused With Music.
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I would imagine that the trade off for 20/15 vision for golf would be the need for reading glasses for close up things. I have a friend whose eyesight is like this. He can see a deer a mile away, but without his glasses he can’t see the food he is eating. I’m thinking contact lenses or even glasses with a zoom function would be very cool and leave you with both near and far vision. While we are at it, I would love to have the ability to add infra red to my vision for walking home at night through the woods.
There are a bunch of genes that if we could control when and how much they responded would give us better control of our health. It is the knowledge and technology to turn the activity of the gene on and off that is needed.
I like the LED tat. I’ve seen the ones that fluoresce under black lights and they’re cool as well. My question while watching the video was whether these would be ‘installed’ like other tats or would the process be more surgical? Maybe a combination of LED tat technology and nanotech would give us completely programmable tattoos.
I like the idea of the google glasses, though what I’d be looking for would be the ability to store and recall faces and names. I’d never forget a name again!
These are all neat, and as you said pretty much achievable now.
Hey Pastor_Alex!
As I understand it, the better-than-20/20 vision resulting from Lasik wouldn’t be any more limiting than any other Lasik procedure - though I admit that I think this mostly because I’ve never heard of the issue with up-close vision you mention as a concern.
I’d love contacts or some other upgrade that would allow me to see further into the spectrum, as well, beyond what unaugmented humans can see.
The gene therapies are extrapolations from what’s known and available - reasonable extrapolations, I hope.
The LED tats, as I understand them, come in two flavors, both surgically installed. One, the one envisioned in the video, would run via a fuel cell that would attach to a blood vessel and extract blood sugar for its energy. The other, while currently illegal in the U.S., uses a magnetic implant, which allows one to charge it through the skin.
Thanks much!
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I would imagine that the trade off for 20/15 vision for golf would be the need for reading glasses for close up things. I have a friend whose eyesight is like this. He can see a deer a mile away, but without his glasses he can’t see the food he is eating. I’m thinking contact lenses or even glasses with a zoom function would be very cool and leave you with both near and far vision. While we are at it, I would love to have the ability to add infra red to my vision for walking home at night through the woods.
There are a bunch of genes that if we could control when and how much they responded would give us better control of our health. It is the knowledge and technology to turn the activity of the gene on and off that is needed.
I like the LED tat. I’ve seen the ones that fluoresce under black lights and they’re cool as well. My question while watching the video was whether these would be ‘installed’ like other tats or would the process be more surgical? Maybe a combination of LED tat technology and nanotech would give us completely programmable tattoos.
I like the idea of the google glasses, though what I’d be looking for would be the ability to store and recall faces and names. I’d never forget a name again!
These are all neat, and as you said pretty much achievable now.